Rational, Responsible and Reasonable Ethics

 Wouldn’t it be nice if every decision we made was rational, responsible and reasonable?  Of course it would. The problem is that figuring out what the rational, responsible and reasonable thing to do isn’t always easy. And despite our good intentions, getting a group to agree on the best course of action is even harder to accomplish. 

The challenge is how to integrate your ethics into your decision making in a way that helps you make better decisions that will reflect your values and allow you to be the sort of ethical, compassionate and responsible leader you’ve always wanted to be without getting into arguments with others.

Step 1: Create a list of ethics you value most. You can get this list from your faith tradition or from the 10 Humanist Commitments. https://americanhumanistcenterforeducation.org/?page_id=19369

Note:  Most people regardless of backgrounds - value the same things. Just understand that in a secular workplace - you must focus on the shared common human values and not on personal religious values like - obedience to God.  Focus on the common public values and not on your personal religious specific values. The religious reasons why you value these things is a personal matter - that you value them - is a public matter as it tells others what to expect from you.

Step 2: Sort the values based on what you think is most important.  Think of this as creating a priority list on how to break ties when more than one value is in conflict with another value. Which ones win out?  Studies on global ethics find compassion is highly rated - as is personal responsibility and honesty for instance. The point is to understand which you think is most important. 

Step 3: Start actively talking about - what good outcomes are - based on your chosen public values.  Is this solution compassionate? Responsible? Honest? How can you maximize the good that comes out of a decision and minimize the harm?  This is the actual practice of using your values explicitly in your decision making. 

Step 4: The final step is to make sure- you are making your decisions based on - accurate information.  This requires humility - which is hopefully - one of your values.   If you make decisions based on bad information - your decisions will be bad - not good. To make sure your decisions are good - you have to make sure you have good accurate information - which means - accepting that what you think you know - may not be so. And being willing to correct yourself when you make a mistake.  Learning how to determine what is true and what isn't - is an important life skill.

Want to learn more:

I have online courses that will teach you how to do this better. The first is:

Reality Based Decision Making For Effective Strategy Development - https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/

Or consider taking one of my certificate courses in Applied Humanistic Leadership - https://humanistlearning.com/category/businesscourses/professionaldevelopment/certificateprograms/

Ethics in the Workplace

I teach humanistic business management and am a Humanist. Ethics is central to everything we do.

Whether your ethics are explicit or not, you have a set of ethics you live by and these ideas of what is right and wrong help you make decisions. All the time.  Little decisions and big decisions. The problem in a workplace or group setting is that different people in the group have different ethics. And, we humans are herd animals, meaning, we observe what the social norms are and we go with them to not stand out. Obviously, there are individuals who don’t go with the flow, but most of us can be convinced to say 2+2 equals 5 if we are in a group of people who seem to fervently believe that is so.

This go with the flow instinct we have impacts how ethics manifest in the workplace. If what we observe is people being unethical, we assume that is accepted in this social group. It is therefore super important for people who care about values to do 3 things.

1)      Make the values of the organization explicit. Meaning, sit down and think about what you value in person to person relationships and make that explicit. How are we going to make decisions? What are we going to value in our decisions? How much money we can make? Whether or not we are helping the company? Whether or not we are helping our boss? Whether or not we are helping our customer? Whether or not we are helping the environment? What do we do when our values come in conflict? Which values should dictate our decision?

2)      Actively make decisions based on your explicit value statement!  Where most companies go wrong isn’t in the creation of a value statement, it is in the fact that they don’t actively use their values in decision making. When they don’t, it becomes clear to everyone that the value statement is just a piece of paper, but that the organization doesn’t really make decisions that way. You can change that by actively invoking the values in every day decision making. If someone is gossiping, the response is – we treat people with respect. When deliberating on a decision – the question asked out loud is – how do our different options relate to our values statement? What is the ethical decision to make? Do this – and the culture starts to change. It also means that we should not tolerate bad interpersonal behavior or “cheating” just because someone is a manager or a high performer. You either actively value your values or you don’t. This has to come from the top.

3)      Change management. There is a science to this and it involves changing the herd norm. You don’t need everyone to be on board to get this started. You just need some core people to implement it and create a new cultural norm of ethical decision making and interpersonal relationships. Their job is to discuss and make active the values and to enforce them through social discussion and decision making. Once people see that – yes, these values are actually valued, they will start to self-enforce these new ethical norms. Probably the most difficult part of this is being willing to let go of the people in your organization who are unethical and don’t change. If you keep them around, they will continue to exert social pressure towards unethical behavior and instead of having an ethical company – you will continually be fighting them. They aren’t worth it. If they can’t behave ethically, let them go.